Field of the Invention
One disclosed aspect of the embodiments relates to a recording apparatus and a recording method.
Description of the Related Art
Recording apparatuses are known which use recording heads including discharge port arrays in which a plurality of discharge ports for discharging ink are arranged and perform recording by discharging ink while moving the recording heads. In such recording apparatuses, discharge characteristics of the discharge ports may vary due to manufacturing errors and the like, and accordingly discharge amounts may vary depending on the discharge ports. When such variation in discharge amount occurs, density unevenness may be caused in an image recorded on a recording medium.
In this regard, Japanese Patent Applications Laid-Open No. 5-069545 and No. 2001-105697 describe a head shading method which records a test pattern from a recording head, reads a discharge characteristic of the test pattern by a sensor, and corrects image data corresponding to each discharge port based on the read result.
As the head shading method, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 5-069545 describes that a discharge characteristic of a test pattern is obtained in units of a discharge port by one reading operation in each image area, and image data is corrected for each discharge port based on the discharge characteristic. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-105697 describes that a test pattern is recorded for each discharge port group including a plurality of discharge ports, a plurality of the test patterns is each read using a low resolution sensor to obtain a discharge characteristic of the test pattern in units of each discharge port group, and image data is corrected for each discharge port group.
However, according to the method described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 5-069545, the discharge characteristic of the test pattern is obtained for each one of the discharge ports in only one reading operation. Thus, a high resolution sensor is required which increases a cost of the recording apparatus.
On the other hand, according to the method described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-105697, the discharge characteristics of the test patterns are not obtained for each of the discharge ports, so that the sensor to be used may be a low resolution sensor. However, a plurality of the test patterns is recorded, and thus used amounts of an ink and a recording medium may become large. In addition, the method described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-105697 has a possibility of causing density unevenness in each discharge port group to be read. In this method, the discharge characteristic is separately obtained for each discharge port group, and accordingly a density difference between adjacent a plurality of discharge port groups may be often visually recognized.